Process improvement project success: Children’s Clinic of Pueblo
Throughout the last 18 months, many of our network practices have indicated that the rate of anxiety and depression amongst their population has seen an uptick, particularly in our pediatric practices. The Children’s Clinic of Pueblo was no exception. When they compared the number of depression diagnoses in the first 6 months of 2020 to the last 6 months of 2020, they saw a 500% increase. Based on that alarming increase, they chose to focus their process improvement project on the depression screening and follow-up care gap. To them, managing a patient’s mental health is a key component of the annual well visit and critical to the patient’s overall health:
- Their goal: Increase the completion rate of depression screenings (using modified PHQ-9) to 90% of their total patient population, ages 11-19, by the end of the year.
- Improvement: Baseline–3.65%; Q1–26%; Q2–46%
- Intervention: Assigning specific goals to every team member in the practice; ensuring each team member is committed to the goal and modified workflows; making the work top-of-mind by discussing and evaluating at each practice meeting; coordinating appropriate care for all positive screens.